Thursday 20 November 2025 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Online (registration required)
About
The presentation will be followed by a response from Dr Matteo Fumagalli, Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews.
About the book
Islam in Russia is a rare scholarly attempt to understand the tolerant nature of Islam in the modern Russian Federation since the state’s official acceptance of Islam.
The book explores the key factors that have contributed, over time, to the establishment of a co-existent form of Islam in modern multi-ethnic and multinational Russia. It also probes discussion of the role that Russian Muslim intellectuals have played in forming contemporary Russian Islam. It concludes that the co-existent form of Islam in Russia can be linked to three key factors: its historical emergence, the intellectual culture, and strong regional identities.
This original and engaging examination of the development and identity of Islam in Russia is a useful resource for students and scholars of Global Islam, Islam in Europe, History of Russia, Islamic History, Islamic Thought and Modern Religious History.
About the speakers
Dr Diana Galeeva is a Visiting Scholar to the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge (UK).
She has previously been an Associate Professor, Mohamed Bin Zayed University for Humanities (UAE) (2021–2024), an Academic Visitor to OSGA, University of Oxford (UK) (2022–2023), a Visiting Fellow at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (UK) (2023, 2021), and an Academic Visitor to St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford (UK) (2019–2022).
Dr Galeeva is the author of three books: Islam in Russia: Formations of tolerance (Routledge, 2024), Russia and the GCC: The case of Tatarstan’s paradiplomacy (IB Tauris/ Bloomsbury, 2023) and Qatar: The practice of rented power (Routledge, 2022). She is also co-editor of the collection Post-Brexit Europe and UK: policy challenges towards Iran and the GCC States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
She has two forthcoming monographs: Encyclopaedia of Islam in Russia (Mohamed Bin Zayed University for Humanities, 2026) and The GCC States and the Caucasus: Geopolitics, Influence and Bilateral Relations (IB Tauris/ Bloomsbury, 2026).
Dr Matteo Fumagalli is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, where he also serves as the Director of the Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus Studies (MECACS), and the Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies (CSS). Dr Fumagalli’s research interests lie at the intersection of the study of identities, ethnic conflict and violence and the (geo-)politics of natural resources. He has conducted research in the post-Soviet space (especially Central Asia and the Caucasus) and East Asia.
About this event
This online event is organised through Alwaleed Centers Worldwide and part of the Centre of Islamic Studies (University of Cambridge) Middle East in Cambridge series.
Registration is essential for this event.